


"Mine"

by 45teid



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 21:13:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8816437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/45teid/pseuds/45teid
Summary: Louis doesn't like crushes.(A doomed relationship in Six Parts.)





	

**Part 1: Shock**

Louis doesn’t like crushes.

His past relationship was a mess, and he’s not sure he would’ve even come out the other end were it not for Harry. A week after the official breakup he stood on his roof in his underwear and drank unhealthy amounts of tonic water to the shuffled stream of musical soundtracks.

But this is worse.

Because now it’s all Harry, charming Harry who everyone loves, and he’s not sure whether he wants to be him or be with him. Harry, who is kind of straight and struggling, as confided a couple of months ago, who couldn’t possibly like someone like Louis back. Harry, who does better in all the subjects they share, who is funny, gorgeous, who does all the stupid things in the most endearing way.

First he says he likes someone.

And everyone, Zayn, Liam, Niall, even Harry, pester him on and on, pointing out random boys asking if that’s him, is that him, but most of all so glad that he’s over Nick and moving on. One time they joke that maybe it’s Harry, and Louis’ blood stills before they inevitably drop the idea.

Then, he tells him in art.

Harry asks all the questions, laughs in disbelief, so that the whole day turns into periodic Q&A’s where Louis answers as coolly as he can. “Why?” Harry asks, too many times, and Louis tries to explain. Harry is flattered. And then, Harry might feel the same way.

He tells him on the way home.

 

**Part 2: Anger**

Louis doesn’t sleep anymore.

They’ve fallen into a pattern of this clumsy affair after their first kiss at the end of May, this nervous, lovely thing next to Harry’s primary school in light rain, under a tree. Louis remembers thinking how cliche the moment was, and if he kissed Harry right now it would be just like in a movie. So he did. And they didn't really stop that day. They kissed in passing, on the road, when they were alone and when they weren't. It was supposed to be their first and last date, and Louis cried on the train home.

Harry cries over the phone now. Each time they sneak off, innocent trips to school bathrooms, they end up in this position again, making out against walls, sneaking into cubicles if someone comes in so as not to get caught. And then they say goodbyes with smiles at school gates and then Harry calls and if Louis doesn’t pick up he’s scared something will happen.

Because this is wrong, he is wrong and he shouldn’t be doing this, and Louis apologises for ever saying anything, for being too suggestive and leading him there. Too pretty, too tempting, too wrong himself for holding Harry’s hand down the wrong path.

He comes over to Harry’s house to revise and they do it again. A couple runaway moments where they’re on Harry’s stupid creaky bed in Harry’s tiny room and Louis is under him, until he pulls away again and Louis apologises as they lay there facing closed eyes and Harry cries in his arms before Anne comes home.

When he tells her out of guilt, Louis has to write ‘happy birthday’ on post it notes.

**  
Part 3: Denial**

Louis is not sure how he’s going to pass his exams.

Yet it’s so worth the feeling of arms around waists and danger when they get too close in classrooms, Head Boy giving him Head in their favourite toilets every intervention, every after school, every lunchtime. The growing list of things Harry would love to do to him, if only they had the space to do it.

And even more so the fond brushes and fixes, gleaming badges on worn blazers, running through all the various speeches and events Harry’s representing. Now he stays behind until 7, 8, 9 for support, to see his boy be amazing after breaking down from stress days or hours before, only so he can’t catch him at the end, too busy talking to other people. But that’s okay. Because it’s Louis who he touches and compliments and keens to, Louis who understands him and his body and how it all works, Louis’ name Harry can’t help but gasp through the hand clasped over his mouth when no one’s around and they should really be revising heart structures.

Except, it’s Louis who Harry’s starting to ignore, Louis who has to pick up, stay up, show up til he’s not getting any sleep and his health is in ruins. Louis who gets dismissed when he’s annoyed or not okay, because Harry can’t deal with that right now, Louis who has to pry knives away from wrists over the phone at 2am while his own suicidal thoughts drill the back of his skull.

He’s building a case file of things that shouldn’t be okay, but are. How Harry stops talking to him if Louis runs out of time to finish him off, even though Harry hasn’t touched Louis properly for the past four months. How Harry comes in aggressively ignorant to Louis’ existence until after break, when he flits back to Happy Normal and doesn’t know what Louis means when he says he needs to stop treating him like shit. And then that one time over the phone, when Harry called Louis something bad in a sexual way and Louis spaced out so far away that he couldn't quite verbalise how dirty and disgusting he felt when Harry realised, muttered a gruff sorry, then hung up.

But most of all when they were brought in to talk with the headmaster because they had been stupid about the bathrooms. When, knowing what Anne would do if they admitted anything, Louis offered the fact that he’s not doing so well, that he’s been fucked in the head and Harry’s been helping him as an excuse. The distraction of organising counselling lets them off the hook, and Louis disassociates in silence as Harry kicks around chairs instead of thanking him.

And Louis knows it’s wrong for him to do things like this but isn’t that what makes the good things so much better, so much sweeter in comparison? Morning kisses and cute notes on good days, the nice things he sometimes says. Maybe Harry’s right to call Louis paranoid, to push him away when he shuts down at the loving closeness Harry has with Zayn, someone he used to like, maybe still likes, because the closeness he’s supposed to have with Louis feels like an obligation. But he can’t say that, because Harry does care about Louis, most of all in the bathroom next to the Music classroom, or when he wears those shorts Harry likes. That’s when Louis is sure Harry loves him, whatever else he did that day, because he tells Louis how pretty he is, how amazing.  
  
But outside, even though they're well past school gates, he won't hold Louis' hand. The boy who pushes him against walls like they're one wants him to walk a distance behind him. And maybe that's normal for someone who's not properly out yet. Maybe it's wrong for Louis to assume being boyfriends means the same thing in public.

He wishes he still had other friends to ask.  
  
  
**Part 4: Depression**  
  
Louis doesn’t remember why they’re fighting.

He knows he definitely must have done something wrong, but it’s getting difficult to keep track.  
  
There are voices before the history exam and later, when he pleads Harry for space and time and Harry demands whether it’s instead a personal attack, whether Louis is still talking to Liam and Niall behind Harry’s back. They drown him out when Harry begs and cries later that night to make it up to him, to finally be better to him because he understands now, he swears he does.

Louis ends up in A&E for nine hours the night before results day, but makes it in nonetheless with only a cotton swab where the needle was. The phantom feeling of the attached structure doesn’t pass until much later, after they get their results and head to the bathroom in their own celebration. They kiss, and they laugh, and Louis tears up because this is what he wants, to stay this content forever. He remembers Anne’s deal, that she’d talk with Harry and reconsider the issue of them dating after exams, has been waiting and praying for it ever since he heard. This is what they need; a real way in with her blessing, no more guilt or sneaking or secrets.  
  
“When are you going to talk to Anne?” he asks eagerly, perched on the row of sinks with legs wrapped around Harry’s waist.  
“What?”  
  
Louis scrapes an A.  
  
Harry gets his A*.  
  
  
**Part 5: Bargaining**  
  
It seems good now, just friends again. Louis admits he’s missed the good parts of Harry, and as long as he doesn’t expect any time or attention, he finds it manageable.

And though the good parts are largely sex, that’s okay too. They talk and they fuck and there’s no strings attached, though Harry gets jealous when Louis wanders from his standard and sometimes Louis finds himself back to doing favours for him, just to ease the accumulating weight of Harry’s various responsibilities. It’s okay when Harry makes Louis come for the first time in the three years total they’ve been together and Harry calls him “Mine.”

Two weeks later he admits, “I’ve met someone else.”

  
**Part 6: Acceptance**  
  
They’ve both grown up. It doesn’t matter now.  
  
Now Harry walks around proclaiming how gay he is, how he’s going to hoe it up when he gets into Cambridge. Louis met his boyfriend once at a barbecue, the first group event he found himself able to go to since he lost all of his friends, though he had to leave when it made him sick to see the boy sitting on Harry’s lap. God knows he spent the next couple of days hating himself for the fact that Harry could still have such an effect on him.  
  
Maybe it’s true. Maybe no one will ever love Louis. Maybe he never was and never will be good for anything, and maybe Harry was the only person who could appreciate that, make him so hyper aware of everything that was wrong with him and everything that he did that that was the only thing Louis noted about himself.  
  
What adds insult to injury is the half-minded confession Louis hears in passing,  
“I’m so inexperienced. I wish I had a straight friend to practice kissing on.”

  
Louis would give anything to burn the last four years like that. 

 


End file.
